Yes this is going up as a crazy way, it was less than $0,20 a few weeks ago, and it was just $0,48 on the last wednesday.. I was going to buy some, but i dont know why, but i felt that it was going to crash soon.
It has always been a good project, and i have always feel a little bit attracted to this one, specially because they are a serious project, not a crappy one.
But i dont know, the price increased a lot and that is the only reason of why i am afraid of buying just know, maybe it is one of the last ATM that it is going to touch forever.
A certain % of mined coins (from each mined block) goes directly to some scientifical funds (there's a foundation behind the coin) to support an innovative tech project w/o real money support.
There's a platform TBA @ 2018 allowing EMC2 holders to donate some % of holdings whenever they want to.
That makes the project unique, and probably avoids the coin from de-listing if the coin "sleeps" miles away from current momentum it has etc. Quite the opposit - there's a real "thread" to be listed on more exchanges after its recent heyday.
People around the projects believes we just reached 1/3 of the hill now, and some crazy investors even think $5-10 goal to be achieved any time soon, which is highly optimistic, but not entirely impossible.